Craig Sherbourne: Hoi Polloi

That awkward period between childhood and adulthood is fertile ground for writers in all genres. It's the time in our lives when we become aware of ourselves as independent moral agents for the first time. And at the same moment we sense we are not just passengers in our own lives, being driven by our parents, by society, by history. We are faced with the daunting realisation that we hold the wheel in our own hands.

Adolescence is often considered to be the moment where we begin to lose the innocence of childhood, but as New Zealand-born, Australian-domiciled writer and playwright Craig Sherbourne attests, it is a wonder we can look back and imagine there was any stage in our lives when we were innocent. "Innocence" derives from a word which meant "harmless". Just because children aren't deliberate about their actions doesn't mean they do no harm.

Sherbourne spares no one in this coming-of-age memoir, least of all himself. He grew up in a small New Zealand town closely resembling Hastings (re-named Heritage for the purposes of this book). His father (whom he calls "Winks") was a publican, and his mother ("Heels") a steaming snob. Both his parents were racists, firmly convinced of the moral and intellectual inferiority of the Maori ("Horis") whose alcohol problems they nevertheless sustained and exploited.

From Heritage, they shifted to Sydney, where his father entered the liquor retail trade and joined the big-noting racing scene and his mother, accustomed to feeling herself to be unassailably part of the upper crust, agonised over how far down the social scale they'd slipped.

Meanwhile, Craig muddles along, managing to avoid doing any major harm by a mixture of naivety and sheer good luck. Such is the mass of prejudices and distorted views of the world instilled in him by his noxious parents, that Craig's growing up and away from them represents nothing less than his only chance of moral rescue.

The book's title comes from Sherbourne's mother's ambition to be considered a member of the Sydney "hoi polloi". Even when he points out to her in the dictionary that hoi polloi actually means the common people, she doesn't resile from it, insisting that common usage has altered the word to the point where the dictionary is now wrong. This vaguely pathetic error encapsulates so much: how entrenched ignorance can become when it is married with arrogance.

Hoi Polloi is superbly written, funny and startling at the same time. Few people are capable of viewing themselves in such a stark and brutal light; fewer again will have the inclination to show others the result. He has little affection for his characters, including himself, but he has every sympathy and, above all, he has hope.


* Macmillan, $29.95
* John McCrystal is a Wellington writer.